I think she has 19. Hopefully I will be able to check in more detail soon…or perhaps when we take her for her first dental checkup soon. Meanwhile, this is what I think she has: 9 bottom teeth (3 incisors, 2 canines, 4 molars) and (maybe) 10 upper teeth (4 incisors, 2 canines and 4 molars).

Motor Skills

Is attempting to walk up and down the stairs on her own, while holding on to the balustrade. Scary!!

Can imitate action songs very well. e.g. If You’re Happy and You Know It.

Climbs on anything and everything.

Will carry her stool over to the sink and climb on it to wash hands.

She will try her best to wriggle out of her onesie jammies

Communication and Social Skills

My favorite part of her development this month was when she distinctly and clearly called in a sweet voice, “Mommy!!” It has been very consistent now and errr…quite hard for me to say no to.

She knows most of her animal sounds, but somehow according to Emma, the cow is quite a “scary” animal!

Every day she adds more and more words to her vocabulary. I just know that I will soon lose track of what she can say.

Milk (pronounced correctly as “Merlk”)

Sit couch

Sit car

Car

Slides

“Deh-yee” (Daddy)

Mommy

Hannah (…and Hannah is SO SO SO delighted!)

Emma (yes she can say her name!)

Cat and “meow meow”

Dog and “woof woof”

Cow

Bear

Nose

Mouth

Ear

Eye

Hair

Feet

Foot

Stuck!

Rice

Spoon

“Wear this!” when she wants to tell me what she would like to wear

Sun

Star

Says “Wheeee!!!!” when going down the slide (and also when Daddy or Mommy is driving along winding roads)

Balloon

“Kitty” (Hello Kitty)

“Bar-yee” (Barney)

“Eh-fern” (Elephant), with trunk action and sound effects

Roars like a lion/tiger

Happy

Sad

Kite

House

Glasses (referring to my sunglassses)

Dance

Flash (not sure how she picked this up, but she said it when I accidentally left the flash on when I took her picture)

Shower

Hug

“Ah-puh” (Apple)

“Barsh-tif” (Brush teeth)

“Brera” (Umbrella)

“Mar” (More)

Loves the “I Love You” song from Barney and can hug and kiss at the correct point in the song. On that note, she is now very into Barney and watches Barney almost every day. She says “Watch Bar-yee!!”

Food and Feeding

Loves rice, especially chicken rice and barbecued pork rice. She appears to be slightly allergic to grapes though…it’s odd, because I have fed her grapes before and she was fine. I will try again in a few weeks’ time.

About 2 weeks ago, Emma suddenly developed a fever. She registered a temperature of 38.2ºC despite being her usual self the whole day. To be fair, she had a sore throat and slight cough a few days earlier, but she had looked on the way to recovery, so the fever actually took me by surprise.

Anyway, she was very listless because of the fever and I had to quickly give her a suppository to bring the fever down. She fell asleep but woke up at 3:00a.m. and when I changed her, I noticed her breathing was slightly wheezy. I promptly took her downstairs because she was fussing a lot probably due to breathlessness, and I gave her small sips of Izumio hydrogen water. After about half a pack, she fell asleep, and almost instantly all wheezing gone.

The next morning, I decided to take her in to see the doctor. He confirmed that her lungs were quite congested and she would have to undergo some nebuliser sessions. She had one done right away, and after that the doctor said her lungs sounded better. Had her lungs still sounded congested, he would have to order an x-ray immediately, in case it’s pneumonia.

I strongly believe that Izumio had helped Emma healed somewhat and prevented her from getting pneumonia. What she had was bronchitis, and resulted in shortness of breath, wheezing and some cough. She had to go on a course of oral antibiotics unfortunately, and nebuliser sessions twice a day for about 3 days (morning and night). The doctor told us that her fever would go up and down during the next few days while she recovered and we were to bring her in again if the fever still persisted after 3 days. The doctor also said her appetite might be affected if she was still short of breath.

The fever never went up again. And she ate like a champion. (Must have been the Izumio again)

Emma continued to heal and get better, and while the first few days of feeding medicine was stressful, I finally found out that all it took to feed her medicine was that she wanted was to sit up on the chair and fed straight with the syringe….just like a big girl. So no need to hold her or cradle her….well, so much for all the stress and worrying!

She is now completely healed, praise God…and her cough and phlegm were gone within 5 days, which is remarkably fast, judging from past experience.

Oh yes, we have….when our kids have activities, it follows that the whole family will participate along too…so here’s a brief run-through of what we have been up to.

Easter Celebration

During the Easter weekend’s catechism class, Hannah and her classmates in preschool participated in the meaningful “washing of feet” ritual.

Family Day

We like to spend our weekends lazing around, enjoying family time together. But a few Sundays ago, our family time was a different kind of family time, when we attended Hannah’s school’s Family Day event at Times Square Penang. It was our very first time at Times Square.. LOL There were fun activities like Treasure Hunt, Minute to Win It, arts and crafts and a few stations for toddlers too.

Needless to say, it was a fun-filled Sunday afternoon full of running and bouncing for the kids.

Ukulele Performance Evening

The following week’s Saturday saw us attending an informal performance of Ethan on the ukulele together with a few others. He sang and played two songs: Somewhere Over The Rainbow and Rhythm of the Rain. We are ever so proud of him…now I’m wondering if I will be allowed to sing with him on the uke next time… haha…

Ethan’s Sports Day

Since Ethan’s Sports Day fell on a Monday morning, Emma and I were the only ones attending it. The kids moved from station to station throughout the day and participated in various events, like the obstacle course, sprints, relays, ball dribble and team sports like Captain’s Ball and Tug-of-War. Ethan proudly showed off his silver medal for the ball dribble event and a gold medal for Captain’s Ball. Well done Ethan!

(I think he’s trying to bulk up on some muscles now, cos I told him he has good potential as a sprinter. He ran quite fast but was outrun by the bigger boys)

Beautiful Friendships

Last but not least, here’s a rare gem of a photo of Emma with perhaps her first friend ever, Izayah. This was taken during one of Ethan’s and Hannah’s soccer coaching sessions.

We’re looking forward to an exciting rest of the year, with more and more interesting activities coming up such as Ethan’s school concert (in which he landed the role as one of the main pirate characters!), Hannah’s school sports day (which includes a fund raising event), a short vacation for the kids (hopefully), and of course, Hannah’s school concert at the end of the year.